Apsley Gorge Pinot Noir / 2022 / 1.5L

Description:

The Apsley Gorge Pinot Noir 2022 is a cool-grown, medium-bodied Tasmanian Pinot Noir from Bicheno on the East Coast, built on dark cherry, spice and fine tannin rather than bulk. In magnum it is a wine for a long lunch and a slow evening, and one that will hold its shape well past the point most bottles have peaked.

Aromatically the wine leads with black cherry and satsuma plum, then turns savoury: crushed raspberry leaf, clove, a little smoked meat and something faintly forest-floor. The palate carries real depth of fruit for a wine of this weight, with sappy red berry through the middle and a thread of orange-peel brightness that keeps everything lifted.

Apsley Gorge sits several kilometres inland near the entrance to the Apsley Gorge, where afternoon breezes cool the vineyard and push harvest towards the first week of May, typically among the last picked in Tasmania. That long, unhurried ripening shows in the 2022 as fine, powdery tannin and firm natural acidity, with maturation in a mix of new and two-year-old French oak adding cedar and a gently grippy finish.

Pour it with duck, roast pork belly, mushroom risotto or a whole roasted chicken with thyme — a magnum suits the sort of table where a second helping is assumed.

Drinking well from 2025, with the structure to reward cellaring through to around 2034. Large format ages more slowly than a standard bottle, so this magnum will be the more youthful wine of the two at any given point.